


A Stitch in Time

by fannishliss



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-30
Updated: 2013-01-28
Packaged: 2017-11-27 09:20:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/660327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fannishliss/pseuds/fannishliss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor senses his bondmate and tracks her down, but he's breaking all the rules.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**title: A Stitch in Time**  
author: [](http://fannishliss.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://fannishliss.livejournal.com/)**fannishliss**  
pairing: Nine/Rose  
warnings: none  
rating: R  
Spoilers: pre-s1 through Boom Town.  
length: 11,000 words

A/N:   A Rose/Nine Epic for the lovely [](http://emraldeyedauter.livejournal.com/profile)[**emraldeyedauter**](http://emraldeyedauter.livejournal.com/) on the occasion of her Birthday: her request had to do with CE as a bad boy, and also Bonnie Tyler's song "Holding Out for a Hero" — so in my head that translated into all the dark heroes I loved  as a teenager in the 80s — soundtrack at the end.  Happy Birthday Em -- hope you like it!

 

=========

 

The Time Lord who told people to call him the Doctor huddled, folded small into a secret corner, shivering, rocking.

Breath after shuddering breath howled implacably into his lungs, and he howled them out again.  Agony, madness, horror — why couldn't he just let go?  why couldn't he fade quietly away?   why couldn't the hearts stop beating, the breath cease at last?  

"Doctor," came a voice, intruding into his agony.

"Go away!" he shrieked, scrabbling deeper into his corner.  

"Doctor," it said again, calm, patient.  

"Leave me be!"  he wailed.  

"I can't leave you," it said. "I am you, or, I will be.  You're going to get through this.  It's going to be okay," the voice soothed.

"Liar! Liar liar liar!" he shrieked through his sobs.  Nothing would ever, ever be okay ever again.  

"Doctor, I know it hurts, but you have to trust me, it's going to be okay,"  the voice said.

"It can't!  It can't ever get better!  How can it?"  he howled. His arms ached, so tightly was he holding himself in, fingers clawing into his own sides.  

"There's someone dreaming of you, Doctor," the voice gently teased.  He could almost see wide eyes, a boyish smile.

"What?"  he said, momentarily taken by surprise.  Could it be true? Could someone be dreaming of him, someone left alive, spared from the carnage he'd made in this universal void?

"Dreaming of you, her true love,"  the voice whispered.

The Doctor's clenched and weary body relented, just a little, as the tiny seed of curiosity planted in his mind by the voice began to take root, reaching out tiny leaves, searching for a ray of hope.    "What?" he said again.

"Rose," the voice breathed, reverently, in adoration. Rolling out of the name like the tides were compassion, love and hope, washing over him,  a balm to his wounded soul.  

"Rose," the Doctor echoed, and in that round and beautiful vocalized breath, that magnificent and perfect name, he began to open up to the possibility of his salvation.  

===

It was illegal according to the eternal codices of a vanished planet, unorthodox at the very least, and if Rassilon had deigned to believe in heresy, probably heretical.  But Rassilon was gone, the Time Lords were gone, all of Gallifrey was gone, and the Doctor's last chance at sanity would be gone too if he didn't at least try.  The Time Lords had always said he was bad, so bad he would be.

With her name in his mind, swathed in the golden-rose glow of love and compassion the voice of his future self had somehow sent him, the Doctor tried to center himself enough to visualize his own time stream, to peer forward to the time when her life resonated alongside his.  It was always chancy, always so much easier to trace the streams of simple linear beings, or even other Time Lords, the ones who stayed put in their nice hierarchical hive instead of jaunting around the universe getting themselves killed like mayflies while others of his generation were still playing at being rebellious teenagers. No, not any more, they weren't—all gone.  But someone, someone remained, and the silky phrase "true love" rang in his head like a fairy story.

His time stream had always been a tangle, no clear beginning, no definite ending, divergences spinning out unexplained, but it was a cobweb now, battered and ragged, whole swathes of his life erased by the war and the Time Lock.   It hurt to look at, even if it hadn't been folded and crumpled in on itself with paradox.  He was so torn.

Still he looked, hoping against hope to see that glow, some hint of sunrise, life-giving warmth returning over an ocean's tumultuous gray roar.

And then, miraculous, he saw it, a simple flower blooming in the midst of the devastation his lives had become.   What a glorious thing it was — the convergence of their two lives — radiating with miracle and wonder.  He'd never dreamed such a thing were possible, not for him, loner, outcast — but there it was.  

The sweetness of it, the innocence, the rightness of it took his breath away.  His sorrow and horror threatened to pull him down again, as he thought of how his touch would sully that blossom, his desperate grip fastening around her wrists like manacles, his crimes blackening the creamy blank page her short life would have been.  But how could he help himself?  Love called to him.  The miracle of his own living thoughts, hopeful despite all the evidence around him, all the things he'd had to do, and the voice had said love, "true love," Rose.  He had to look. And there she was.

====

She was just a girl, a silly young girl, painting over the freshness of her youth with false colors, blackening the warmth of her brown eyes with the soot of assumed ennui, twisting her body to the thump of cheap music, artificially high from something she'd trustingly accepted, dancing in the arms of a pretty boy with a lump of coal for a heart, dead steel behind glittering eyes.  

He'd found her in a dream, a dream of a memory, and around her dreaming mind he sensed the silken cocoon his Tardis spun around those she loved.   This was a future, a girl's dreaming mind, and she trusted him, or she wouldn't have been wound up inside his Tardis, and he was the bad boy, rulebreaker, invading her inmost privacy.  But he couldn't help himself.  The warmth of her spirit was too much for him to resist, pulling him in, thawing the ice of his isolation, and it hurt like a thousand knives, as he started to come back to life.   

"Rose, Rose, come home with me," the boy entreated, one thing on his mind. The Doctor hated him on sight.

"Ah, Jimmy Stone, you're full of yourself," she drawled.  

He is! the Doctor shouted, full of his own shit, he wanted to scream, but she couldn't hear him through the haze of bass and chemicals.

"Come on, baby, it'll be fun,"  he cajoled, and the Doctor wanted to rip his hands off her.  How dare he touch her!  How dare he carelessly lay hands on something so very precious!  He already loved her, his mind gratefully clinging to her dream.  She was perfect — or she would be.

"Kiss me, and if I like it, I'll think about it," Rose shouted over the tumult, and the Doctor wanted to die.  One taste of those perfect lips, just one, and he could die content.

The boy leaned in and took Rose's mouth, pulling her against him, grinding, licking into her.  Once he had her breathless, he let her go.  She stared up at him, entranced by the smooth, handsome features, the thick wave of his black hair, the sparkle of his eyes, her own moisture glistening on his bruised red lips.  

"Okay, yeah," she breathed. "Let's go!"

"No!" the Doctor screamed.  It was just another teenage girl's poor decision, but to him it was a catastrophe, how carelessly she trusted this handsome young brute to do right by her, to honor and protect her. He was already planning on using her up and throwing her away, and Rose didn't have a clue.   But of course, it was a memory as well as a dream — so they all knew what was coming next.  Still, it played out.

She stumbled, frowned, like she'd heard the Doctor's scream in her head — but she hadn't.  She stumbled on, and the bad boy hauled her back to his place, into his bed, and through the next six months of her unravelling life.   One minute the boy would be all smiles and they'd laugh and it was brilliant,  drinking and dancing and getting high sometimes and sex, yeah.  

But the instant she didn't go along, the cloud would descend, and he'd begin to wheedle and argue and threaten, always wily, never threatening her with his fists, only with his words, his wheedling favor.  He was a clever one, that Jimmy Stone, till her credit ran out, and she came home to find a new girl naked in their bed.  

There was a voice in her head yelling, see, see, see what he's done, what he is, how little he thinks of you, and she thought the rage was her own anger, she thought the scorn was her own scorn for herself, but it was the Doctor, feeling it on her behalf, her own other half she hadn't yet met.

She packed her things in a couple of bags and moved back home to her little pink room, eight hundred pounds in debt and her mum's sad eyes accusing, the voice in her head saying, Rose, you'll do better, someday it'll be better.  Someday you will be loved. And somehow, she knew to believe.

The Doctor left one dream, only to dive into another.  Once he'd found her dreaming mind, he rested there again and again.  Sometimes she was only a child. Sometimes, she was nested safe within his Tardis.  Always, she was perfect, and already, he loved her so.

In dreams, Jimmy Stone was a lout. His beauty was slackening, sallow. He'd had one too many of something, but Rose was wide awake.  Clubs were too loud, too smoky, too dark or dazzling by turns, but the club in the dream was magic, and out of the midnight magic came a tall man in a black coat, loping like a lion.  His beauty was not like Jimmy's, he was no facile surface, this was a man whose eyes said everything, whose mouth was pure sensuality, whose bone structure was elegance, brilliance. He was shorn, a fighting man, streetwise, strong and larger than life,  and at a glance from him Jimmy crumbled and then he was reaching out to Rose, and the beat was pounding, and he was saying, you're everything, everything to me, my Rose, and he swept her off her feet; his touch was silken pleasure all over, inside and out, and he brought her shuddering awake—

—and he was still rocking in his corner, grasping at this tenuous link, a dream of a girl he'd someday meet.

In and out of her dreams he dipped, learning her, tasting her, devouring her — feeding on the sustenance he needed to survive the hell of his people's destruction.  Without Rose, he would've died there in the corner, died again and again until nothing was left to regenerate.  But in dreams, Rose lifted him up.  These glimpses of a beautiful, laughing young girl, illicit though they were,  tempted him back to life.  Someday, the voice had promised, she would love him. Somewhere, somewhen, there was Rose.   

Trembling, he unfolded.  On legs kitten weak, he stood, propping himself against the wall.  He was filthy, hair matted in tangles around his eyes, emaciated, throat swollen shut with thirst.  Somehow, he made it to the pool, and fell in, sipping, floating, shredding off the rags, letting them drift away, till face up, he opened his eyes, and he looked around, and he was alive.  Alive.  

====

His Tardis had regrown herself while he was dreaming.  Her walls were coral now, struts in the console room reaching up toward a ceiling that had once been like a chapel.  Roaming her corridors, he found doorways here and there of twisted pale wood, and he knew she was trying to comfort him, in her way, for the loss of their home.  Cut off from the Eye of Harmony, he had not even been sure they would survive, but the vortex sang in her heart as strongly as ever, pulling on his consciousness with twinges of possibility from behind her shields.  He wished, not for the first time, that the Time Lords had allowed their Tardises the ability to speak, these amazing cybernetic organisms who translated every language in the universe into their Time Lords' minds except their own mathematical flights of fancy.  That precious gift was denied them, for they were slaves, forever denied direct speech with their bonded masters.

He'd grown to trust his wily machine; her grace had delivered him into the heart of darkness and out of it again more times than he could count.  She took him to the quirky little planet where he'd been so many times, and that was no surprise, for Rose was human, and she had to feel how he longed for the girl whose dreams he'd spied upon.  The Tardis took him on strange little excursions, detours into history: the sinking of a ship, the explosion of an island, the killing of a leader.  He wondered what she was thinking, tying him to these fixed points in time, but he dutifully observed, and then came a day when it wasn't a fixed point — at last she'd taken him once again to an opportunity to intervene.  

With legs grown strong again at last, fit and fleshed out, a new sonic in his pocket and brains keen, he went up against the Nestene Consciousness and met a girl named Rose in the nick of time.

Can a Time Lord be taken by surprise? Is there anything new under the suns for a man who'd used up eight lives, lived out a millennium, fought his enemies and his own people right out of existence?

He thought there was something new in the feel of his hand around hers.  In all his lives, when had a simple touch meant so much? When had he ached so badly to get that hand back into his own?  Why couldn't he even stop talking? Why couldn't he just walk away?  How dare he step into this innocent girl's life with the trouble he knew would follow wherever he went like a cursed black dog?

He dared to take her hand in his again — he told himself it was for the last time. He tried to put the turmoil of his existence into words: the vastness of the universe, the breakneck speed, the dizzying whirl — the enormity of the task assigned to his Time Lord brain: somehow, against hope, to sort it out, to find the pattern of it all and pull the thread that put things to right — when the only thing he really felt steadying him was that warm, soft, human hand — the hand of a well-meaning, bright and curious girl.  He had to drop the hand and walk away now.  Drop it— drop her— and with a wrench, he'd done it.

Somehow, he'd managed it:  he was walking away, but it was like he had eyes on the back of his head, watching her, watching her as they parted, watching her whirl as the Tardis dematerialized and he knew he'd be back.  It was no accident, that trip to her flat, that chance meeting with her mum, the glimpse into her average, domestic life.  He might claim he didn't do that sort of thing, but oh, how he ached for it:  tea, telly, a sofa, laughing eyes looking into his over a basket of chips, all the precious things he'd never had. She had invited him in, but he wouldn't have waited.   He'd have broken in just to stand outside her bedroom, cool his forehead on the door in case she might be just on the other side.  

In dreams, he'd never waited — he'd simply slipped through.  

He'd left her, but he couldn't stop thinking about her.  Had she gone home and shrugged it all off?  Had she sat up, pondering plastic arms and aliens late into the night?  He wondered if she was asleep right now, as he sat staring into the artificial brightness of the Tardis at 3 am, a chessplayer in a game without a timekeeper, waiting for the Consciousness to make another move.  His willpower failed him. If he reached out, if he found her in a dream, wouldn't that mean it was meant to be?

He reached out, and there she was.  Rose! Just on the other side of the city from where he sat: they were practically breathing the same air, and every part of him called out for her.

He was in her dream again, in the now, immediate.  So close!   

He couldn't believe she was dreaming of a club again. Then when he caught sight of her across the room, he felt his hearts speed up and he had an inkling what these unfamiliar rituals of courtship must involve.  He remembered, untold years and lives ago, stretched out long across the console room floor, losing at chess against a robot dog, in hopes a beautiful and brave young Gallifreyan woman might see him, and what? Take note of him.  Admire him.   Approve.  They'd become great friends. Now she was gone, gone with the rest.  

Nigh-immortality wasn't what it was cracked up to be.  And now this girl, Rose Tyler, just barely nineteen years old-- he was in her dream, and she was dreaming of clubbing, so that was how it would be.  
   
"Oi," said a flat and washed out copy of Jimmy Stone.  "That's my girl you're looking at."

The Doctor felt his blood heat and thought he might enjoy this imaginary clubbing in more ways than one.

"No, she isn't your girl," said the Doctor coolly.  "That's Rose Tyler, she's one of the most remarkable women on this planet, and you're not worth the carpet you soiled last night."  

"What?"  the boy said stupidly.

"Rose Tyler!" roared the Doctor, spreading his arms wide, and now he had taken her dream center stage. "Rose Tyler is brave and brilliant and worth a thousand of you! eh?"  He knew it was all true, even though he'd hardly met her — in her dreams he'd known the truth of her.  

The Doctor widened his eyes dramatically, leaning back, every inch of him daring the boy to take a swing. It was only a dream, and Jimmy was only a faded memory, but he obligingly took a clumsy swing, which the Doctor gracefully dodged.  He grabbed the boy by the shoulders and looked him right in the eye.

"You should never have touched her, never even should've looked at her,"  the Doctor seethed through clenched teeth, and then like lightning, he struck, his forehead slamming into Jimmy's face, and the boy went down.

"Who asked you!" Rose shouted.  

The Doctor whirled, confused.

"What?"  

"Who asked you, I said!" Rose repeated.  "He's just a stupid kid and you a grown man! You should be ashamed!"

The Doctor blanched, his triumph quickly fading back, his blood chilling to ice. Rose was glowering at him, disappointed.  

"I... I ..." he stammered.  "He hurt you," he said quietly.  

"Got over it, didn't I," Rose stated, proud and strong.  

The Doctor stood agape.  "Yeah.  Yeah, course you did."  

"Why are you looking for boys to fight anyway?  I know, you're hard and all, but aren't you meant to be a hero? You've got bigger fish to fry, yeah?" Rose stared at him. He was impressed by the intensity of her stare through the mists of the dream.  

"This is not how I thought this dream would go," the Doctor muttered.  

"What?" Rose said.

"Don't you want to dance?"  the Doctor asked, at a loss.   

"This place is dead," Rose said. "I want chips."

With that, the Doctor woke up and burst out laughing.  

He soon caught up with her again, in the pizza shop with the fake plastic Mickey, and maybe he enjoyed it a little too much when he took its head off, but she kept bringing him around.  She was right to call him out.  Why didn't he care if Mickey was alive or dead?  It was painful to care.  They were so fragile, their lives so short.  Rose made him care.  She was shaking him back to life, the pins and needles in the dead leg he'd need if he wanted to walk, to run — and before he knew it, her hand was in his again, and they were running, and she was saving him and the Consciousness was defeated.  Time to say goodbye — or?

"Right then — I'll be off!  Unless, uh, I dunno, you could come with me?"

"Is it always this dangerous?" she said.  

"Yeah," he said immediately.  He owed her that at least.  

The yearning in her eyes matched his.  Say yes, he pleaded with her.  Mickey was ranting about how he was alien, grabbing her around the legs.  

With a pang, he saw her give in to the voice of reason, reminding her of responsibilities, her mum and Mickey.   

"Okay," he said. "See you around?"  The despair seemed to swell inside him like a geyser, boiling, bursting, drowning him.  She was still standing there, but there was already a haze of tears veiling her from his sight.  He wondered if she could see them from so far away.  

As the Tardis reluctantly dematerialized from the alley behind the estate, the Doctor felt his empty life stretching out ahead of him.  Without the Time Lords keeping track of him, he would be at loose ends for the rest of his unnaturally long existence.  He doubted that he'd even come to a natural end after his thirteenth regeneration— his Tardis had rebuilt herself and continued to function without any contact with Gallifrey, and he guessed that he would too, regenerating endlessly without any reason to live.  Without a touchstone, he saw no point to his continued existence.  Rose was that touchstone.  He needed her.  

Flying from her was lunacy. Worse than eccentricity or a fit of pique, it was madness.  He had to have her.  Whatever he needed to say, he'd say it.  

His hands flew over the controls, quickly reversing, rematerializing.  He opened the door and no time had passed; his old girl had brought him back to the very moment.  His gaze drank in Rose's glad surprise and he knew he'd made the right decision.  

"It also travels in time!" he said, and beamed at her as she ran to him, everything right about her snapping back into place around him as he stood back, Tardis door open, and let her run to him.  

====

The Doctor had traveled with many different companions over the years.  He remembered his grand-daughter Susan, and her teachers Barbara and Ian — his very first companions on the Tardis.  He remembered how difficult it had been understanding the human way of looking at things — something that had come naturally for Susan, who ending up marrying a human herself.  He'd tried to go and visit her, after he'd gotten back on his feet, but the Tardis couldn't get to her.  The Time Lock, it seemed, had sealed her away from him, if she even still existed at all.

Honestly, most of his companions had been beautiful young women.  The Doctor  liked women:  their openness, their friendliness, their cooperative attitudes.  By and large, men were set up to compete, and the Doctor didn't like competition; he knew his own brilliance, but he didn't like the feelings that rose up in him when he was forced to prove himself.  He liked saving the day, and he liked the smile on the face of a beautiful woman when he saved her, the planet, or the universe.  

Meeting Jabe at the End of the World was just one of those things.  He was charming and graceful, and she returned his interest.  It was natural for the two of them to get along, worldly beings that they were.  The Doctor had never involved himself too deeply with the women who traveled with him; he loved them of course, but as friends, or even as daughters. He preferred to dally with strangers, pleasantries and momentary closeness exchanged in mutually beneficial circumstances — no overly complicated emotional entanglement, just civilized interaction.

Jabe had known him for a Time Lord — almost a mythical being to her— and she had sympathized the destruction of Gallifrey.  She had no way of knowing that she was the first being ever to speak to him of the war and the destruction of his people, bringing tears to his eyes that he couldn't control.  And then she had burned too, and he had barely saved Rose, and everything inside him had turned once again to ice and fire.  

Rose had been so brave, running into the Tardis without a second thought, and he'd shown her her world being destroyed in a conflagration of fire.  What a demon he was!  How could he lure a young girl into traveling with him, and then convince her she'd put her trust in the hands of a madman?

"Where are you from?" she asked, innocently enough. She'd couldn't know how the question burned in the hollowed-out spaces of his mind.  

"All over the place," he returned.   The name of his homeworld rang in his head like chimes.  He couldn't speak it out loud, through the ashes that clogged his throat.  

"They all speak English," she noted.

He could deal with that at least— in fact, it was something he was quite proud of.  "No, you just hear English. It's the gift of the Tardis— telepathic field, gets inside your brain, translates."  He leaned back, opening himself up to her.  

Her eyes turned challenging.  "It's inside my brain?"

"Well, in a good way," he said, the swell of shame rising again. She didn't realize he'd been inside her head himself — that a desperate alien had latched onto her subconscious world as a lifeline and in fact, still clung there.  

"Your machine gets inside my head.  It gets inside and it changes my mind and you didn't even ask,"  she accused.

"I didn't think about it like that," he responded feebly. He tried not to think how many times he'd ridden into the romantic dreams of a young girl, in the guise of any white knight on fiery steed, to gallop her away in good symbolic fashion from a mountaintop or a cliffside overlooking stormy seas.  

"Tell me who you are!" she was shouting.

"This is who I am, right here, right now. All right?" he raged.  He could feel emotion seizing control of his countenance, his faculties— he wasn't like this, he'd never been like this before.    "All that counts is here and now and this is me!"

She wasn't having it.  "Yeah, and I'm here too cause you brought me here, so just tell me!"  

He'd thrown himself across the room to get away from her then.  He couldn't bear for her to see the rage and desperation contorting his face into a demon's.

Nice move, Time Lord, he thought to himself— persuade a young girl to go traveling with you, and next, demonstrate to her that you're unhinged.  

Rose had turned it all around with her smile. She wanted to know him — really wanted to know — and she wasn't frightened when she caught a glimpse of the truth.  She was something new to him, something different.  He wanted her to feel with him what he felt, even though it was terrible sometimes.    He'd never wanted that before.  As young as she was, somehow she understood him.    
   
He sought an hour's sleep that night, weary from the adventure at the End of the World.  Before he woke, he heard the voice again.

"She loves you already," it said. "She doesn't know why. And you love her too.  Tell her, tell her as soon as you possibly can."

The Doctor opened his eyes and wondered what it would feel like to make that claim, to profess to love, after a lifetime of running away had culminated in desolation.  
====

The Doctor wanted to make amends for taking Rose into the heartless future — so he took her into the past.  How badly could that turn out?  

She'd knocked him back with her shy beauty in Victorian fancy dress, and yet he couldn't give her a decent compliment without undercutting it with a smirk.  Still, he'd made her smile despite his awkwardness.  

Finally the moment came when it was almost too late.  Surrounded by the horrible zombie-like Gelth, he had finally been able to reach out to her.  Or rather, once again,  she'd reached out to him.

"We'll go down fighting, yeah?" she said.

"Yeah," he answered, amazed at her bravery in this impossible situation.

"Together?" she asked.

"Yeah," he answered, and their hands entwined.  As ever, the most amazing feeling of completeness washed over him at her touch.  He could almost hear the words from the future — somehow, broken as he was, he was Rose's "true love."  He couldn't really understand how a Time Lord could be so blessed, especially someone like him who'd done such terrible things.  But here they were, hands entwined.  Could she feel, as he did, the way their lives rang pure whenever they touched? the way their time streams harmonized so effortlessly, as though meeting in a broad valley to flow out into eternity?

"I'm so glad I met you," he said, his heart in his throat.

Then it was time again for running, and soon they were back in London.

The Tardis skipped them forward in Rose's timeline by one whole year. Materializing before Jackie's disbelieving eyes was all part of the Tardis's cunning scheme.  He would have avoided Rose's mum and lied to her at every opportunity if he'd had the chance. Now he'd felt first hand Jackie's rage at being kept in the dark about her daughter.   

He tried again to let Rose know just how much she meant to him.  Trapped in the safe room of number ten Downing Street, surrounded by aliens, he'd opened up to her about his quandary:  "I could save the world but lose you."

He'd been in awe of her bravery when she responded with complete trust in him to do the right thing — a faith he'd lost in himself during the horrors of the Time War, a faith he still wasn't certain wasn't misplaced.   

He promised himself that if they got out of there alive he'd tell her what he really felt, but events always seemed to move so quickly. Before he had a chance to collect himself, he was face to face with the last, terrible, pitiful Dalek.

Facing down the chained creature threw the Doctor's already troubled emotions into turmoil. The Time War churned painfully in his all too recent memory, and though he was mostly able to keep his thoughts away from the horrors of those days, he had no idea how long he'd curled into a corner of his Tardis, nearly comatose from guilt and grief, his mind seared and raw where his telepathic link with other Gallifreyans had been ripped away.  His bloody rage and determined efforts to kill the creature startled him — he would have electrocuted it without hesitation if the soldiers hadn't pulled him off the switch.  Then Rose, with her pity and her compassion, had saved the Dalek, transforming it into something new.  The Doctor was continually horrified at the Dalek's ability to kill  hundreds of people so effortlessly, without qualm— just as he was horrified at the killer inside himself, so willing and ready to send the Dalek screaming into oblivion.  

Only Rose could've stopped him from murdering the confused creature as it brought its own life to an end. The Tardis stood waiting for them.

"A little piece of home," he said, quietly. "Better than nothing."

"Is that the end of it, the Time War?" Rose asked gently.

"I'm the only one left. I win! How about that,"  the Doctor said.

"The Dalek survived.  Maybe some of your people did too," she tried to comfort him.

"I'd know — in here.  Feels like there's no one."  He was amazed at how it finally fell from his lips— the gaping loss of his people had subsided to a dull ache with Rose around.  

"Well then, good thing I'm not going anywhere," Rose promised.

"Yeah,"  he said.   But was it as good a thing for her as it was for him?

====

Adam came along for the ride to Satellite Five.  Dropping him off at home with a door in his forehead satisfied the Doctor more than he could say.  

Traveling with Rose, meeting Daleks, seeing the march of history thrown out of joint by something as simple as one greedy Jagrafess— it made the Doctor uneasy.  He began to wonder how different things were, now that the Time Lords were no longer there to monitor the integrity of time.  Put it simply — the Doctor began to wonder if he now had the freedom he'd never had before to change things.

He took Rose to see her father.  He hadn't known what she'd ask for, but when she asked to comfort her dad at his death, he reckoned that would be as good a test as any.

He stood with her on the edge of the street as her dad was struck down, but she was too paralyzed by the shock of it to run to him.  He shouldn't have taken her around for a second chance — he knew very well that he was playing with paradox.  It was his own stupidity, his own hubris to blame for Rose's mistake, but he'd angrily taken his guilt out on her.  

"My entire planet died, my whole family — do you think it never occurred to me to go back and save them?" he'd said bitterly.  He didn't even know who he was referring to — no one in the House of Lungbarrow had deigned to speak his given name for hundreds of years.  But he knew very well he would have taken almost any risk to get back to Gallifrey, just to experience and savor for one last moment the maddening itch of Gallifreyan minds bickering in the background of his thoughts —  filling up one last time the hall of phantoms that echoed emptily in the back of his mind.

He'd never thought of himself as cruel, but this trip to see her dad was the cruellest cut of all — and he'd made her out to be stupid because of her very best qualities — her compassion, her bravery, her selflessness, her quickness to act.  He was the lout, the brute.  And still, he made her apologize.   She leaned into his arms for forgiveness, but it was her forgiveness he sought.  

====

In a way it was a relief to see Rose with Jack Harkness, or whatever the ex-Time Agent wanted to call himself.  He was staggeringly handsome, undeniably sexual, and Rose's pupils dilated whenever he looked into her eyes.  The Doctor wanted to feel that it was a relief.  He'd had companions go off together before, hadn't he?  What luck, for them, to meet another person who'd gone on adventures with the Doctor— another human being to reminisce with after he'd left them behind.  But just as he'd bristled at Mickey, Rose's rightful boyfriend, and Adam, a stray bother, he found himself bristling at Jack, a fifty-first century human, who, if nothing else, was slightly psychic and could read body language like a book.  

The Doctor would've sworn Jack was doing it on purpose, testing him somehow, measuring him.  Jack was flirting with Rose in good faith — he'd take her just as far as she was ready to go — but he was watching the Doctor out of the corner of his eye all the while, and flirting with the Doctor too, if he wasn't mistaken.  It made the Doctor edgy.  He wanted to put himself between Jack and Rose, he wanted to bare his teeth and watch Jack back down.  The very least he could do was argue to Rose that he knew how to dance, that he wanted to cut in, that it wasn't Jack she wanted to dance with.  Had he waited too long after all?


	2. Chapter 2

"Now," the voice said urgently. "Now! — You've waited long enough! If you're ever going to tell her, do it now!" 

The Doctor's eyes flew open. Just a little nap on the way home from Raxacoricofallapatorius. The ship was in night cycle for the benefit of the humans on board. The coral hallways were silent and dim. Reaching out, he could feel Jack dreaming, a little boy running through the grass. Rose was dreaming too, dancing, always dancing, and there was already a shadowy version of himself in her dreams. So easy to slip inside.

"I don't know this song," Rose was saying as she swayed in his arms.

"You must," he said. "I know a lot of things, but I don't make it a habit learning old Earth popsongs." 

"It's sad," she frowned.

"That's because I'm here," he said, off-handedly.

"What do you mean?" Rose smiled.

"I'm here in your dream, Rose," he said, with a little twinge of guilt. 

"What?" Rose said, her smile fading. 

How stupid could he be? He'd thought of Jimmy Stone as a user, a brute, and yet here he was in Rose's mind, pressed against her, feeling her warmth luxurious against his iciness, and he could make her believe whatever he wanted.

He stared down at her starry brown eyes, so full of compassion, and he backed away. 

"I'm sorry, Rose. This was a mistake. I was lonely. I wanted you. I — I'm sorry," he stammered, pushing away, running from her, fleeing back into his own awareness. 

He lay staring up at the ceiling. Around him his room was the same as it had been ever since the era, lifetimes ago, when the Council had exiled him to Earth and he'd worked with the Brigadier all those years. He remembered the bedroom suite Doris had had delivered to him when he'd admitted to the Brigadier that he slept on a cot and dressed in a cupboard. 

Now this old bedstead and bureau, the tea table and chairs, even the antique standing desk Alistair had given him, scattered with the little trinkets that seemed to collect in his pockets — it all seemed a mockery, when for so many years it had seemed homelike, a comfort, a thoughtful gift that reminded him of beloved old friends. He hadn't seen the Brigadier in years. He wondered how old he'd gotten. It was always such a shock to see the ravages of time on an old friend's face, when he himself only got younger and younger.

A soft tap at his door brought him out of his reverie. He shook his head and sat up.

"Doctor?" Rose called softly from the other side of the door.

His hearts began to pound. The Tardis had led her here — otherwise she'd never have been able to find the room, hidden so deep in the labyrinthine corridors. 

"Rose?" he called. 

"Are you all right?" she said. "Can I come in?"

"One moment," he answered. He sprang out of bed, straightened the coverlet, and hurriedly pulled on a jumper and jeans. "Lights," he whispered, but the Tardis only brought them up to seventy percent.

He opened the door.

Rose was in her dressing gown and pyjamas, fluffy slippers on her feet. She was Jackie's daughter from head to toe in her pink ensemble. With her face washed for the night, her hair tumbled from sleep, she looked so incredibly young that the Doctor's hearts broke for her all over again. How had he dreamed of her? How had he dared, even for a moment, to hope she might be his?

"Are you just gonna stare all night or are you gonna invite me in?" she snapped.

"Oh. Come in," he said, helplessly. She breezed in and seated herself in one of the leather wingchairs, kicking off her slippers and curling her feet underneath her. 

"We need to talk," she said. 

He stood frozen by the door. She'd got out of bed in the middle of the night and the Tardis had led her here. She wanted to leave him, couldn't stay another second. His blood felt like ice as the nightmare scenario played out in his head.

"Come on then, sit down! If I were gonna bite I'd've done it already!" she mocked.

Mutely he made his way over to the other chair and sat down. 

"You were in my dream, and not for the first time," she pronounced. 

He opened his mouth but she interrupted.

"Don't deny it! My mate Shireen heard about lucid dreaming when we were kids and she got me into it. I can remember everything I dream, and I know you've been in there. I didn't want to say anything, but now I have to."

Here it comes, he thought. I'm a monster, pushing my way into a girl's head without asking, taking advantage in the worst way.

"I'll take you straight home," he said, humbly.

"You'll do no such thing!" Rose said sharply.

"What?" the Doctor said, taken aback. 

"You finally got up the nerve to say you wanted me, and now you're ready to pack it in?" Rose said.

He just stared at her. He felt his ears turning red.

"That shut you up, didn't it," Rose said, looking away.

"What do you want me to say?" the Doctor said. 

Rose turned her gaze back to him and he was pinned by the emotion he saw in her eyes. 

"You don't have to say anything, nothing you don't want to say. But if," Rose whispered, leaning forward, "if there's something you need to say, anything at all, then say it."

The Doctor felt a wave of longing flooding over him. He wanted her. He needed her in his arms. He felt like without her there, he might shatter or simply dissolve away into a trickle of barren dust.

He opened his mouth, looking at her. She was so lovely to him, so open, so strong. Just nineteen years old, and such a miracle, to be so kind to an ancient relict like himself. 

"Rose," he said.

"Yes, Doctor?" she answered, never looking away.

"I — I — in the dream I said I was lonely, that I wanted you. But that's not it," he stammered. Why was this so difficult?

"What is it then?" she said, patiently.

"I want — I want," he closed his eyes, and even then, her beauty hung before his mind's eye, the beauty that came from everything she'd become for him, more than a companion, more than a mate, she'd become something right and real inside of him, setting things in place again where everything had been tossed into a jumble. 

"I want to love you," he said, his eyes slowly opening.

There before him, he saw the lovely sight of his words hitting Rose Tyler hard. Her eyes darkened, her lips fell apart, and she leaned even closer to him.

"Is that so hard— learning to love?" Rose asked.

"Intellect — dominion — that's all that mattered for my people. They were telepaths, and they longed to be Individuals — they walled themselves off and forgot how to love. But now — it's too — too — "

"I get it," she said. "You don't have to say it."

"How?" he asked, his heart swelling in gratitude again. "How? Why don't you run screaming from me? I'm alien, I'm a Destroyer of Worlds — you're just one little girl and I went inside your mind without asking— "

"You did that," Rose said. "What's your excuse?"

"No excuse," he said quickly. "I know it's wrong."

"It's not wrong," Rose said, "if you'd just ask." 

"May I?" he whispered, "again?"

"Yes, you may," she whispered very clearly. 

The wave of lust that swept over at him at that nearly blinded him. It was as if she were the last star in the universe, one vast giant of gravity pulling everything in at terminal velocity, and he was hurtling toward her, unable to stop himself. 

"You don't know what you're offering," he whispered, but he was leaning a little closer anyway. Their two chairs weren't far apart.

"Yeah, I do," she said.

"But you don't know anything about me," he warned. He tried to sound stern, but his voice was hoarse with emotion.

"Yeah, I do," she said, unconcerned.

"Like what?" he asked. What had he given away?

Rose licked her teeth, considering. "Like, you're the Doctor. Most people run away from trouble, you run towards it."

He thought that was a terrible thing for her to know. "Why should you run towards it then, just because I'm so stupid?"

She held his gaze. "As long as i'm running, with you, that's where I belong."

"But I'm alien," he blurted, again.

"I know," she said, shaking her head saucily.

"And doesn't that scare you," he asked.

"No," she said lightly.

"It should," he said.

"Why?" Little minx, she was looking at her nails, like this was some sort of tedious checklist he was running through.

He tried to make his voice harder. "Because I don't die, Rose, and you do."

At least that got her attention. "What does that mean?"

"I'm a Time Lord," he explained, "my physiology's not just different, it's engineered to let me live for thousands of years."

"So?"

"So? It means I'll have to watch you die!" he exclaimed.

"Why?" she asked.

"Why what?" he returned.

"If they could engineer you," she said thoughtfully, "... I mean... not saying I want to live forever, but... why couldn't you do the same to me?"

The idea was staggering. Could he? "Not sure it works that way," he said, swallowing.

Rose stared at him for a moment. "Why are you so scared?" she finally said, very gently.

He had no answer. But he was. He was terrified.

"Doctor?"

The possibility of living forever, the eternal loneliness — eventually even he would wear out, or there would be an accident, something would eventually end him, though he couldn't imagine what. But the thought of Rose, living out those days alongside him — the thought of the joy he'd grow used to, the lengths he'd go to protect her — it was too much to think about.

"You are scared, aren't you," Rose insisted. "You're terrified. Of what. Tell me!"

He swallowed, trying to get a grip on himself. "Built to live forever, me, but not built for this..."

"This — what?" she asked, trying to follow him.

"Abandonment—" he said, not sure why.

She waited for him to explain. His hand twitched, longing for hers. 

"My people, Rose, telepathic, they're all gone," he muttered, looking away. "The silence, it's driving me mad, making me want you, making me want things I know I shouldn't."

"Like what?" she asked.

"Like what I did to you, getting in your head like that."

"I know," she said, after a moment.

He raised an eyebrow.

"I knew all along that's why you did it," Rose elaborated. "Lucid dreamer, remember? The dream language, the imagery, told me all about you."

"Oh, really." He couldn't help the note of skepticism.

"Yes, really—the mountaintop, the white horse? the times I'd be dreaming some innocent teenage dream of dancing and the music would come over all sad? You were stalking me Doctor, years before I met you — couldn't see your face, but I knew you were there," she challenged.

"And you came with me anyway— that was either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid," he judged harshly. 

Rose shrugged.

"But why, why didn't you—"

"—run? I ran all right, but toward you. You're the hero I've been waiting for. Why would I run away?"

"You don't care that I was in your head?"

"You needed me, Doctor. Still do.... you need me more than anyone on this earth. How could I refuse being so needed by someone so amazing?"

"And you're not scared?"

"No," she said, with certainty.

"I might go mad. I might get you killed. I might, I dunno, move into your head without asking and make you do all sorts of things."

Rose chuckled darkly. "What sorts of things?" she drawled.

"Cluck like a chicken," he suggested.

"Bock, bock," Rose said vacantly.

"It's not funny," the Doctor frowned. 

"Yeah it is," Rose said with mirth. "It is a little."

The Doctor was glad Rose had such faith in him, but he wasn't sure he appreciated her making light of his mental anguish and its possible consequences.

Rose sobered a bit. "Look, Doctor, you're not a hypnotist."

"Actually..." he began.

Rose interrupted. "You're not about to like take over my mind, with like some sort of sinister Time Lord roofie whammy."

The Doctor grinned despite himself. "Roofie-whammy, is that the Queen's English?"

"You love it," Rose laughed.

He raised his eyes to hers. "Yeah, I do."

"Do you, though?" Rose asked.

"Yeah. I do," he said, assertively.

She held his gaze but said nothing.

"I do, Rose. I'm not sure, what it even means. But I know how it feels."

"How?" she breathed. 

"It feels like, like, being made new. Not like, dying and coming back, I've done that often enough.... it's like, with you, there's a chance for me, to live, to mean something after everything I've done, everything I've lost and had stolen. A chance for me sometimes to put things right."

The Tardis hummed through the Vortex, cloaking them all in her semblance of night. It was like the Doctor and Rose were still in one of her dreams, but they were both awake. It felt like magic, like he could say anything. 

"I mean that to you?" Rose asked. "Me?"

"Yes," he said simply. He wanted so badly to touch her, but he didn't want to break the spell of revelation they'd woven.

"But you're the Doctor. Putting things right — that's what you do."

"That's what I do now, Rose, since you've been with me. You haven't seen the thing I became... and I pray you never do."

"...like the time with the Dalek?" she said softly.

"Worse. I killed every Dalek in existence. All of them. Watched them burn. And Gallifrey, my homeworld, burned with them."

"But you had to," Rose said.

"How do you know that?" the Doctor countered. How did anyone know that, least of all him?

"Because I believe in you. You make out like you're bad, like you've got some heart of darkness or whatever, but it's not true. You've suffered for what you had to do, and you did it to save the universe. See, I know you. You've been in my head, right, and that sort of thing goes both ways."

The sweet girl had tears in her eyes now, tears for him, sympathy and love, all for him. How could he refuse such a precious gift?

"I — " he choked.

"Say it," she insisted through her tears.

"I can't— " he said.

"You say it, and I'll say it back," Rose promised.

"I can't—" he denied, looking away.

"Yes, you can," she urged. 

"I — I love you, Rose — " he choked out, and it felt different than he'd expected. The gravels in his throat faded away, and a lightness of relief sang through his head. He looked back at her, at her tear stained face, and she smiled, and he smiled too.

"I know, Doctor," she said, "because I love you too."

"Oh, Rose!" he said, overwhelmed, as relief and grief and exultation roared through him like a storm. "I've never, I've never — I don't know what this is! it's not —"

Rose nodded, sniffing. "It's like you look at that person, and you're so glad you met them, so grateful they're beside you, and you want everything good to happen for them, you want to show them everything beautiful there ever was, yeah? and smile at it all with them standing there holding your hand?"

"Yeah," he agreed.

"But — it's something more, though. It's like you're hungry, all the time, or thirsty, and the only thing that makes you feel whole is seeing that person, the person you love, just looking at them, like drinking them in with your eyes, and it makes you feel good all over, like everything's right with the world, just being near them... touching them... holding them..... " she breathed, staring at him with tear-dazzled eyes.

"Yeah," he nodded.

"You never felt that?" she asked.

"Not till now," he said.

"You feel it now?"

"Mmhmm," he nodded.

"Tell me," she pleaded.

"It's more than that," he added. "I look at you, how precious you are, unique in all the universe, and so very necessary to me — and how fragile, how easily hurt, or — or worse, and it terrifies me. I was never terrified for myself, but I am for you. You mean everything to me, Rose. You're the thread I'm holding on by." 

"That's a big responsibility," Rose said.

HIs hearts pounded with shame. "I know. One you shouldn't have to shoulder. Me a Time Lord, and you a nineteen-year-old girl."

He looked up, afraid to see pity or worse, a change of heart. Instead it was love shining out of her eyes, so much more than the awe and admiration he'd always seen in the eyes of his companions. He knew he was impressive — but for some reason, Rose didn't feel that awe as a barrier between them. She saw the problem of his alien nature only as a prejudice to overcome in her own mind — she saw his time machine and his vast intellect as things that made him special — but she wouldn't defer to him and she certainly didn't worship him. When he was rude, she was rude back. She gave as good as she got — when he believed in her, she could do anything — and he felt the same way. She'd turned who he was upside down — and since he'd been careening head over heels at the time, that was exactly what he'd needed. 

"It's not the planet that's spinning, Rose... it's me, hurtling through time and space, unmoored, cut off.... lost, no way home, no direction. But then, I take your hand, and everything changes. It's like I can feel who you are, who I am there beside you, and it all makes sense again... like I'm not just a bit of chaos randomly affecting infinitesimal little outcomes here and there, it's like when you're with me I mean something again."

Rose smiled at him and wiped away another tear. "You mean everything, Doctor. To me, you mean everything."

"How can you know that?" he asked. 

"Nothing else to know," she shrugged. "Nothing else matters, one way or the other. You may have your thousands of years, but I only got this little span, four score and ten, you know? I have to know. I have to choose. And if you let me, I'll choose you."

The Doctor felt his own inadequacies rising up like an insurmountable obstacle. "But, but—"

"Don't but me, billy goat!" Rose laughed.

"I don't deserve—" he said.

She interrupted. "There's no deserving. It's love — free, wild, mysterious. Two hearts beat as one you know, can't stop the dance."

"Baby! this is my last chance—" he sang.

"Thought you didn't take the time to learn earth popsongs."

"U2 is different!" he said, in mock horror.

"Well, yeah!" Rose agreed.

"Everyone loves Bunny!" the Doctor said.

Rose laughed. "You mean Bono?"

"He still calls himself that?" he asked.

"You're having me on!"

"I know the song, don't I?" but he smiled.

"That you do," she smiled back.

"Care to dance, Rose?" he asked.

"To Bunny? Rather faster than I'd care for right now."

"You want something slower?" the Doctor asked, and his hearts sped up.

"Absolutely," Rose said.

"How slow?" he asked, playing along.

"Realllll slow," she purred.

The Doctor stood up and held out his hand to Rose, and when she took it, this time they both shivered with the feeling that ran down their veins.

"What is that?" Rose asked, in awe.

"I thought you called it love," the Doctor said simply.

"It's something more though, innit? she asked.

"You mean, something alien?" he said, pulling her close.

"Maybe?"

"I don't know. Time Lords forgot all that. Locked it away in the past. So they could be Individuals."

"But it's so good!" Rose said.

"Is it?" he murmured. They were swaying together now, and it wasn't a dream any longer.

"Ah, my god. It always felt good, holding your hand, or hugging you, but now, it's like I'm on fire!" Rose said. She looked up at him and her eyes were blown with pleasure. He could stare down into those hungry brown eyes for eternity.

"Good fire?" he asked.

"Yes!" she cried. "Don't you feel it too?" 

"Yeah," he said. "This is only a taste of it, I think. Gallifreyans used to psychically join... Time Lords gave it up."

"You said you knew how to dance. You've done this before, then," Rose said, trying to keep her head.

"This isn't dancing. I've danced, you know, for pleasure... this is bonding. Don't you want it?" he asked, frowning.

"Yes! God, yes. But I guess, you know, tell me what it means..."

"My nervous system makes a telepathic field-- it's learning yours, tuning in to it."

"Will it stay that way?" Rose asked.

"I don't know," he answered. "I think so."

"Forever?" she whispered.

"Do you want that?" he whispered back. "Me? Forever?"

"Yes, a thousand times, yes," she said. 

"Then here I am," he said, and he pulled her even closer. 

He could feel her as his telepathy encircled her. It wasn't like the jaunts into her dreams, misty and dark— it was dazzling, her energies burning into him, every nerve setting his on fire as he linked himself to her. 

"Rose," he said.

"Yeah?"

"Can we have sex?" he asked.

She burst out laughing. "You tell me, Time Lord," she laughed up at him, joy in her eyes.

"I think that's where this is headed," he said, with a slight frown.

"I think that sounds wonderful," she said. "Do Time Lords kiss?" 

"No," he said.

"Oh," she said, disappointed.

"But I do!" he grinned, and he lowered his lips to hers for the first time.

It was almost electric, the pulse that passed between them as their lips touched and they mingled breath. In a sense it was electric, the supercharged Time Lord nervous system setting up a field that sank a few layers inside of Rose, passing over her with phantom caresses, charging her responses with shivers of delight until she writhed against him. 

"This," she gasped, "this is just a snog, I can't wait until we shag!" 

"I keep telling you, Rose, this isn't just a snog. My nervous system is linking into yours. Do you like it?" 

"Yes!" she cried. "Do you?"

"Oh yes," he said. "It's like I can feel everything you feel. It's amazing." 

He kissed her a while longer, until she was gasping for breath and shivering constantly, eyes out of focus, and limbs loose.

"Do you want to lie down?" he whispered.

"Oh, oh yes," she said. "Too many clothes," she added.

"Are you sure?" he said.

"Are you — hypnotist?" she gasped.

"No!" he laughed.

"Then — I'm sure," she said, holding out her arms for him to slide off her dressing gown. 

She had on modest flannel jimjams — blue and white stripes with moons and stars and bunnies on them. The shirt had three big white buttons, and the pants had a drawstring. He pushed the coverlet aside and she was lying against his pillow, there in the bed where he'd been dreaming not an hour earlier.

"Oh Rose," he said. "Am I still dreaming?"

"Am I?" she said.

"No," he smiled.

"Why are you still dressed?" she asked, and in a flash, he wasn't, and he was stretched out on top of her, letting them synch up again. 

"My god, you are gorgeous," she said, stroking him. "So smooth, such nice muscles. A bit chill," she added. 

"That's just the hypnotism talking," he said, blushing.

"No! That's your arse under my hands," she retorted. "Just as I'd imagined."

"You imagined my arse!" he laughed.

"More, you know, looked at it. Pictured it, kind of," she said, demonstrating a good double-handed squeeze. 

He unbuttoned her shirt and flipped it open, leaned down to lay his cheek over her heart. The thumping was hard and fast, and it excited him, that little organ reacting so strongly to him. He kissed her chest, over her heart, and she arched her breast toward him. He kissed, experimentally, toward the peak, which stiffened the closer he got, until he reached it and gave it a good swipe with his tongue. Her whole body shuddered, so he did it again, and as his nerves linked with hers, he began to feel the sensation in his own breast.

"It's like, you want me to nurse," he said. "I feel it."

"Do it!" she gasped, so he closed his mouth over her nipple and began to suckle.

"Aah!" she yelled, grabbing his head and holding him in place. He felt the riot run through her system, nerves zinging out so that while her breast tingled excitedly under his tongue, she felt the pulse of pleasure all the way to her womb. He felt it too, an amazing feeling of need rising up inside him. 

"Rose — I was right— this is headed for sex—" he gasped. 

"Good!" Rose yelled enthusiastically, and scrabbled to untie her pants. 

In a moment they were lying skin to skin. Rose was looking up at him in complete bliss, smiling as she reached up to stroke his cheek.

"You said you were telepathic," she said. "Will I hear your thoughts?"

"If you want," he said. 

"I do!" she answered. 

"All right," he said, and gently he laid his forehead down against hers. His thoughts swam forward, eager to reach out to her, and then he seemed to fall, with a little jolt, into her mind. 

It was beautiful there. It wasn't like a dream, murky and weird. It was Rose, all around him, her joy, her love for him, the pleasure he was giving her.

Rose! he sang.

Oh! you're so beautiful! she sang back. Like an angel! All light, and fire, and music! what's that music?

It— it's Gallifreyan, he sang, and a throb of joy so intense it felt like pain coursed through him. Rose, you can hear me in Gallifreyan!

He'd never stopped to think about it. Always before, linking to a human mind had been a mere fact-finding mission for him, when there was something he needed to know. He'd never imagined that Rose might be able to hear his thoughts in Gallifreyan, a language he thought he'd never speak again.

Rose! he sang again.

Doctor! she sang back, and it was lovely, but he wanted her to learn another name. 

Listen, he said, this is my real name, my secret name-- and he sang her the name that had waited, silent and stilled inside him, all his long and lonely lives. 

It's beautiful, she said. I think I've heard it before!

Startled, he laughed in joy. Oldest secret in the universe, and of course she'd heard it before. 

He fell to kissing her, and it wasn't like any kissing he'd ever shared before. The way her lips opened up beneath his, the way she caressed him with those lips and that wicked little tongue, playful and kind, joyful and serious — kissing Rose was the occupation of a lifetime. And with her thoughts so delighted, filling the parts of his mind that had been empty for so long, he was in bliss. A rapture of fulfillment soothed the horrible wounds he'd sustained at the war's catastrophic end, sealing off the pain of ragged phantom impulses.

Rose, Rose, he murmured.

Yes, Doctor, she said, and he knew, he'd always known, she would always tell him yes. 

She looked up at him with glowing eyes, kissed him with so much care that he felt he'd break apart. She invited him in, body and soul, and gratefully, he slipped inside. She rocked him, caressing him and taking him deeper and deeper inside herself — his thoughts scattered and flew among hers like a flock of birds through the topmost branches of trees, skipping from shadow to sunlight. His body took over, attuning itself to hers, feeding pleasure into her brain through every nerve, cresting, receding, cresting again, till they seemed to ride the waves of an ocean of bliss without any shore. 

At last the symphony of their joining faded to a few last lingering notes, and they fell back inside their own heads, breathless and dazed. 

The Doctor lay staring at Rose, and she lay breathing, eyes closed, smiling her wide, wolfish smile.

"I love you," he said, and it was so easy to say now. Why had he been so afraid?

"I love you too," she answered, and her eyes opened, and she looked at him, and he felt like he was falling into her love all over again. 

"You're not so bad, you know," she said, seriously. 

"What?" he asked.

"In your head. You've got these dark places, you're afraid of them, places where — you could do terrible things, horrible things — but it's not like that."

"What's it like?" he asked, calmer than he had any right to be.

"It's more like those places are your strength, your reserve, for when light isn't enough, and you have to carry the burden," she murmured. 

Her hand gently caressed his face and he realized she'd wiped away a tear.

"Yes," he said softly, "that's exactly what it's like."

"No man should have to bear that sort of thing alone," Rose whispered.

"No," he agreed.

"So I'm with you now, okay? I believe in you. I love you. We'll bear it together," Rose promised.

"Forever," the Doctor whispered, and the voice from his future said nothing, and for once, the Doctor was glad of the silence.

====  
Soundtrack:  
A Stitch in Time  
a Doctor/Rose epic

I haven't ever uploaded one of these but if you are desirous please let me know!

playlist:

Holding Out for a Hero by Bonnie Tyler  
River Gonna Rise by David+David  
Ghost of Stephen Foster by Squirrel Nut Zippers  
Silent Lucidity by Queensryche  
Do You Love Me? by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds  
She Bop by Cyndi Lauper  
Tyler by the Toadies  
Controversy by Prince  
Streets of Laredo by Johnny Cash  
You've Got It by Billie  
My Last Breath by Evanescence  
Come Alive by Janelle Monae  
Some Day You Will Be Loved by Death Cab for Cutie  
Being Alone Together by David+David  
Leave Me Alone by Natalie Imbruglia  
Unchained by Johnny Cash  
In Flight by Harp 46


End file.
